Linguistic analysis of neologism related to coronavirus (COVID-19)

The current study aimed to explore the linguistic analysis of neologism related to Coronavirus (COVID-19). Recently, a new coronavirus disease COVID-19 has emerged as a respiratory infection with significant concern for global public health hazards. However, with each passing day, more and more confirmed cases are being reported worldwide which has alarmed the global authorities including the World Health Organization (WHO). In this study, the researcher uses the term neologism which means the coinage of new words. Neologism played a significant role throughout the history of epidemic and pandemic. The focus of this study is on the phenomenon of neologism to explore the creation of new words during the outbreak of COVID-19. The theoretical framework of this study is based on three components of neologism, i.e. word formation, borrowing, and lexical deviation. The researcher used the model of neologism as a research tool which is presented by Krishnamurthy in 2010. The study is also compared with the theory of onomasiology by Pavol Stekauer (1998). The secondary data have been used in this study. The data were collected from articles, books, Oxford Corpus, social media, and five different websites and retrieved from January 2020 to April 2020. The findings of this study revealed that with the outbreak of COVID-19, the majority of the people on social media and state briefings, the word-formation is utilized in the form of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. The abbreviations and acronyms are also used which are related to the current situation of COVID-19. No doubt, neologisms present colorful portrayals of various social and cultural practices of respective societies the rationale behind them all remains the same.